Arrive 8.30am to the sound of mooing and auctioneer’s rapid talking up of bids. A friendly local stockman, now in advanced age with a gammy leg from life in the bush, stops to tell me a bit about how the auction works. Cattle have to be branded and microchipped from their specific station. A chalkboard above the pen indicates: station; number of animals; A for no growth promotion additives, or B for the opposite.
The auctioneer walks on a raised steel platform above the pens and is accompanied by an employee with an electronic pad recording the results of each pen’s auction; an employee with a long pole with electronic tip to read the microchips in the animals’ ears; and an employee with a long brush and a pot of blue paint to dab on the backs of those animals to be singled out for special treatment – either individual weighing, or cutting out to a feed lot for fattening for 60 days. Bids are in cents per kilo and are for live weight, not dressed.
Racing up and down between the rows of pens are horsemen with hard hats, opening gates, cracking whips and steering each mob from the pen to the weighing station. Cattle of every colour and breed are present, clearly stressed and constantly butting the rails to test for weak points, some even jumping at the gates. Some stud bulls are also penned separately.
The three year drought has taken its toll, the stockman tells me, and some cattlemen have given up – no way to sell their stock, wait for rain, then two years for grass to grow, then a year for bought in cattle to grow…the financial aspect doesn’t add up. Any way, the banks are lurking to call in debts at the worst possible time. The stockman is thinking over whether to sell his herd now, rather than wait for the drought to get worse; or to gamble on rains finally arriving.
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